We bought this as a favor to Henry Morris of Bird & Bull Press who was giving up printing. He used this press to print most of his books and we thought we would to. He printed much larger editions than we do and it ended up being easier for us to do it on our Vandercook SP15 or Universal III.

We only printed one job on it and we did that for a friend who had started the job on a C&P 10x15 which was too slow and far too much physical work. The job was for cigar bands and we printed 110,000 of them. As I remember they were printed about 20-up. See the 2nd photo on the left. Gold foil stamping was done by a 3rd party.

The description below is taken from the Operation and Maintenance of the V50 Miehle Vertical.

The Miehle Model V-50 Vertical is an automatic job cylinder press designed to handle the majority of printing jobs at maximum speed and minimum cost. It has a sheet size range of 3.5” × 5.5” to 14" x 20", handling all stock from .002 to .015 thickness stock. It is designed to print from simple type forms, half-tones, colors, and process plates with maximum efficiency. The operating speed of the V-50 ranges from 3.000 to 5,000 impressions per hour, depending upon the nature of the job to be run.

The V-50 employs the principle of having the bed and cylinder each performing one-half the printing stroke, with the combined weight of the bed and associated parts, including the form, counterbalancing the combined weight of the cylinder and associated parts, thus permitting high-speed production with an almost total absence of jar or vibration. The impression mechanism, through the use of the stop-cylinder principle, permits the cylinder to revolve only on the up (printing) stroke. The press rests upon three points of support, making it impossible for the press to get out of alignment and eliminating the need for leveling the machine.